In Heavy Fire: Special Operations 3D you play as 1 of 3 military personnel (recon, gunner, support) tasked with taking down the insurgents and bringing peace to the Middle East. Obviously, it is military themed and for those who don’t already know, it’s an arcade style on-rails shooter. Oh, and it’s tough, tough as nails (just how tough are nails?) So here’s the good news – if you’re a fan of the old arcade on rails shooters (House of the Dead, Area 51, etc) then you’ll feel right at home with Heavy Fire. The game is divided into 6 missions, and aside from the 1st one, they are freaking tough. Thankfully, you have the ability to upgrade your weapons or purchase new ones. Oh yeah, you’re going to need those upgrades. Seriously, I’m not kidding you. In order to upgrade, you’ll need cash. There are only two ways to earn this much needed cash. One is to complete a mission in the campaign and the other is to replay missions you have previously completed. I spent quite some time having to go back and ‘level-grind’ just so I could earn the cash to unlock more powerful weapons, ensuring that I would survive the next mission. Suffice it to say, I think you’ll find yourself emptying countless clips of ammo and enjoying it all before your time is through.

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Features:

An interactive, destructible environment featuring exotic Middle Eastern locales – from what I saw, there wasn’t too much that was destructible.

Slug your way through six diverse, challenging levels – Yes, they are diverse however, the word you should be focusing on is challenging.

Higher military ranks enable more powerful weaponry – True

A game store bursting with all kinds of cool power-ups – I wouldn’t say ‘cool’, but I’m going to say ‘absolutely necessary’ or ‘much needed’ or perhaps even ‘your only hope’!

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As is tradition with any on rails game, you don’t control the camera, only the on screen target. Enemies will pop up or step out from behind cover at any given time. Usually the enemies will remain in one place, however you will find certain enemies that just run across the screen and spray bullets at you. You can only take so many hits before you are defeated and have to restart the level. Honestly, it can be a pain in the ass due to the sort of long load times, plus the fact that the levels are quite lengthy. Yeah, so um, be mindful lest you die many times, like me!

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You control the on-screen target with your stylus and use either L or R to shoot. In order to reload you can either tap the screen, move the circle pad, or press the B button. The controls are simple and intuitive, so you should have no troubles there.

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Visuals and Sound

The color scheme is pretty basic, muted colors (green, grey, beige) and it is set in the Middle East so you’ll be seeing sand and palm trees. The 3D effects are effective, yet subtle. The levels and enemies look good too. Overall, the visual presentation is quite decent. The audio seems to be lacking is more of less what you would expect if you were playing this game in an Arcade, which is fine because I think that was the intended point.

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Concluding Overall Impressions

Heavy Fire: Special Operations 3D is a fun, and quite challenging on-rails shooter. So if you’re a fan of Arcade style shooters (Area 51 and the like), you’ll enjoy Heavy Fire and the hours of fun it offers.

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Final Score: 4 out of 5

About the author:

Jeremy’s love of gaming, especially Nintendo started in the late 80’s when his parents bought him and his older brother an NES. Many hours were spent playing Mario and Duck Hunt. Eventually Jeremy graduated to bigger and better games and systems, like the SNES, GC, Wii, 3DS, and finally to the Wii U. Ask him what the defining moment of his childhood gaming was and he’ll answer, “the day I beat Zelda 2.” To this day that game holds a special place in his heart. His favorite types of games are platformers.

Jeremy started blogging for NintendoFuse in October 2010. He started off as a lurker on the forums who won a free copy of And Yet It Moves on WiiWare. From there he realized he liked the forums and the site and wanted to remain a part of it. He was brought on board shortly thereafter and has helped post news and reviews for the past couple of years. Currently Jeremy has taken a step back to focus on family and school. He assists in minor back-end site maintenance from time to time.

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I remember when this released for WiiWare, and how it did well for them, enough that it spawned a sequel and I think even PS3 versions.

Any idea if this was a direct port from WiiWare, with features added to it? Or, is it basically the same game on both with just a 3D effect being different?

http://www.wiinintendo.net Jeremy Hardin

I have never played the original, but I was under the impression that this is not a direct port. In order to give you the correct answer, I sent an email to our rep at Teyon Games. They are located in Poland, so usually I get a response back within a few hours. I’ll let you know what I find out.

http://coffeewithgames.com/ coffeewithgames

The pictures just look like the assets they used for the original, because I did a data story on the WiiWare title and used some of the screens shots from it for my data image. I think maybe the bullet holes are new, but not positive.